Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Homebrew PCBs

Ok here's my experience so far on modding out an Epson 880, in case
anyone was interested (and couldnt find a c84 or c88 for $15)

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Scanned all the local thrift stores. They usually have a supply of
inkjet printers in the back. Prices local to the Trenton area of New
Jersey? Range from $7 - $14. I went to three stores most of them
where HP inkjets. The only ones I found that were Epson were a 770
and a 880, so I bought the 880.

Took it home and it didnt print much color and missing a line on
black. So I dismantled the outter plastics, and removed the bottom
blatter tray. Trying to shoot water every place that looked like it
needed a cleaning, didnt do much printing-resits wise, but helped me
clean it up a bit.

Bought a black and a color cartridge (refilled from the flea market
cost: $4.00 for both color and black, making this cost so far $19.00
incl printer).

Swapped out JUST the BLACK cartridge, and tried to print- no results.

I read that the vacuume hose must be clear so instead of taking the
whole assembly apart, I found it was much easier to take a syringe
filled with water and squirt it UP the bottom of the hose (which
faces the blatter tray) until water came out the top sponge. This
way, I know the hose was definatly not clogged then!

Tried to print- still no results.

∗∗∗ ONLY WHEN I put the COLOR cartridge in, did the printer work
perfect. All nozzles working, great! (move on to level 2).

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With all the basic outter plastics removed, there is some type of
plastic held down with two screws, that allows the paper to feed on
the verticle. That had to come out, and cut to shape using a
dremel. There is also some plastic feed roller with an electric eye
on the other end, which unfortunately needs to be there in order for
the printer to keep working.

But after all that, I can feed sheets of paper straight thru the back
now and as long as I manually put it in (at just the right moment) it
will feed and print just as usual.

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The last part I have still yet to do, which is raising the head or
whatever needs to be done to make clearance for the copper board.

I have some 1/32" (super-thin) sheets of copper boards which are
about as thick as probably two pieces of construction paper, which I
can use to try and make sure that the inks will print on the copper -
at least in the print in this condition so far.